Posts about mmm

Oy. I should be writing a book right now and not responding to the zillionth linkless attack on the ills of the blogosphere, this time from NPR’s outgoing ombuds, Alicia Shepard, who blames the “dark side” and “lousy job” of the blogosphere for NPR’s own admittedly unclear (not to mention wrong-headed, in my view) memo forbidding staff from so much as stepping near the Jon Stewart Restoring Sanity rally. She does so without linking to a single blog … except mine. Sorry, blogosphere, I guess I’ve single-handedly lowered your standards.

Shepard acknowledges that management’s memo failed to say that NPR would cover the rally and then she gets all high and haughty that people wondered whether it would. That fails a pretty basic test of journalism: does the story answer the obvious questions? And if it doesn’t, who’s to blame for confusion, pray tell?

She includes in her litany of blog dastardliness my argument that NPR is forbidding journalistic curiosity. She doesn’t attribute or link to that opinion, nor to any of the other probably equally out-of-context smears she alleges. In our low standards of the blogosphere, we think that’s a sin for it robs the reader of the chance to judge for herself.

Shepard doesn’t really address the many other quite legitimate questions NPR’s Papal bull also raises in the fetid mind of the blogosphere. The fact that NPR felt obliged to put Stewart’s rally off limits to its staff but didn’t feel it necessary to issue such an order for Glenn Beck’s rally does obviously raise the presumption that NPR staffers would be interested in the former and not the later — ergo, NPR staffers are liberally inclined. (I have no problem with that, only that it is masked under NPR’s Shroud of Turin Objectivity.) Shepard merely repeats and accepts the company line without real discussion of it. She doesn’t deal with the journalistic questions I raised, only repeats the cant of freshman journalism seminars about objectivity:

But at the end of the day, they have to be professional – and that means avoiding actions that create the perception that they are taking sides in political controversies, including elections.

If you really mean that, then you should follow Washington Post ex-editor Leonard Downie’s vow of voting chastity and order that staff may not cast ballots. For that is taking sides. Except it’s done in private. So it doesn’t create perceptions. That, then, is what this entire episode is really about: perceptions, the PR in NPR.

“She sees her job as explaining NPR to listeners, and listeners to NPR,” says Shepard’s network bio. I’d say she does the former and not the latter. Shepard’s term is about to end (note my restraint, please, in making further comment on that event). NPR: I’ll repeat: Love ya. But please, please this time give the public a representative who sees it as her job to represent the public, not management and the Priesthood of The Way It Has Always Been Done, Amen.

: UPDATE: NPR CEO Vivian Schiller’s response to the kerfuffle is more intelligent and nuanced than Shepard’s. But it still comes down to the same bottom line: appearances.

We live in an age of “gotcha” journalism where people troll, looking for cracks in our credibility. We need to err on the side of protecting our journalism, our journalists, and our reputation. While the credibility and trust that attaches to the NPR brand depends principally on the quality of our news reporting, it can be easily undermined if our public conduct is at odds with the standards we seek to uphold as a news organization.

NPR has told its staff they may not attend the Stewart/Colbert rallies in Washington at the end of the month. I think they’re terribly wrong here, following the journalistic worldview Jay Rosen calls the view-from-nowhere to its extreme and forbidding employees to be curious.

Or as I tweeted: So I guess NPR reporters aren’t allowed to be *citizen* journalists.

Oh, I understand the argument: NPR reporters are supposed to be objective and express no political opinion and do nothing political. I went to J-school, too. And we could argue the point as if in a freshman seminar. I say this is merely a lie of omission, telling reporters to *conceal* their viewpoints and making listeners guess where they’re coming from (the audience knows that can’t be nowhere).

Of course, it’s amusing that NPR had to backpedal and explain why a similar memo didn’t go out about Glenn Beck’s rally. That, the network explained, is because Beck’s was overtly political. Oh, come on, we’re not that dumb. It’s because NPR people are not Beck people. NPR people are Stewart people. They have a sense of humor. Oh, and they’re liberal. No guessing needed.

And that’s OK. It’s time for reporters to be open and honest.

But my real problem here is, again, that NPR is forbidding its employees to be curious. There’s a big event going on in Washington. It could — just could — be the beginning of a movement mobilizing the middle. But NPR people are not allowed to even witness it, to go and try to figure it out, to understand what’s being said and why people are there. No, they can do that only if they are *assigned* to do that. Otherwise, it might seem as if by merely showing up they might have a forbidden opinion.

Gasp.

In its effort to be hyperjournalistic NPR is being unjournalistic. Journalists, properly empowered, are curious. They want to know things. NPR is telling them not to ask questions.

And there’s something more. A few years ago in Washington at the Online News Association confab — which this year, it so happens, is being held the same time as the Stewart rally [coincidence? or liberal journalistic conspiracy?] — I was on a panel back in the good ol’ days when we all still yammered on about “citizen journalists” and a newspaper person came the mic in tears — I swear — saying, “I’m a citizen, too.” Right, I said. So act like one. Citizens are involved in their communities, part of their communities, so they can understand and serve those communities. Journalists tried to separate themselves from their communities (and opinions) and that is much of the reason why journalists lost touch with how to serve them. It is time to get off the fucking pedestal and return to the streets. And the Washington Mall.

I suggest that NPR journalists should protest this order from above. Use social media, folks, and have an opinion about opinions … or at least about curiosity. Start a Facebook page. Start a Twitter meme. Use all those new tools your bosses are teaching you to tell your bosses about this new world you should be part of.

More: Michael Calderone reprints a Washington Post memo that says employees are allowed to watch the rally from the sidelines. Does that mean they’re not allowed to talk to people there? And the New York Times advises staff to avoid such events. Ridiculous. It’s as if the people they serve and cover have cooties.